Silver scandal could change Albany at last

2/1/2015
Greg David

In the early 1990s, it was exactly 52 weeks from the time Assembly Speaker Mel Miller of Brooklyn was indicted on fraud charges until he was convicted and stepped down from his post.

It took six days to force Sheldon Silver from the same powerful job, and this time no conviction was required. In some ways, that shows a little progress in Albany. Legislators seem to have decided that a speaker can't be effective while charges of corruption hang over him.

It is even possible the Silver scandal will serve as a watershed in New York politics and government, fatally undermining the "three men in a room" governance in which all important issues are decided behind closed doors by the Assembly speaker, Senate majority leader and governor.

Already, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos is far weaker than his predecessor Joe Bruno (even before news came that Mr. Skelos may be under investigation). He has spent the past two years relying on a group of independent Democrats in a power-sharing arrangement. Although Mr. Skelos recaptured a bare GOP majority last November, he continues to work in conjunction with Bronx Democrat Jeff Klein, which, at minimum, broadens the political calculus in the state Senate.

In the near term, whoever wins the maneuvering to become speaker will have much less power than Mr. Silver. It is even possible that the factions that have emerged in the past week will remain intact and joust over legislative decisions.

The current arrangement is just fine with the powers that be. Mr. Cuomo has already said he doesn't negotiate with committees. Special interests—especially business groups that use campaign contributions as the key lever of influence—will bemoan a new alignment that they will call chaotic. Everyone will point to the disaster that occurred when the Democrats took control of the Senate in 2010 under weak leadership and gridlocked state government.

The rest of us should want something better. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said it best recently when he drew a direct connection between the three men in a room and Albany's endemic corruption.

"You get swept up in the power and the trappings, because you were never challenged, and because you can easily forget who put you there in the first place," he said recently. "What kind of a system is that?"

And he summed it up succinctly.

"So, three men in a room: Is that really how government should be run?" he asked. "Is that really the way to run a state of almost 20 million people? When did 20 million New Yorkers agree to be ruled like a triumvirate in Roman times?

"And so I ask again, what kind of a system is that?''

He's right.

A version of this article appears in the February 2, 2015, print issue of Crain's New York Business.

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